Over the last week we have asked you to vote for your favourite incarnations of the Doctor in our "Australia's Favourite Doctor" poll. Some found the process of ranking the different actors playing the Doctor easy, while others (including myself) felt it was like ranking their children from favourite to least favourite.

But now the votes are in and we can now announce that the winner, by a healthy margin, is: David Tennant.

The full list in order is:

1 David Tennant

2 Tom Baker

3 Peter Capaldi

4 Matt Smith

5 Christopher Eccleston

6 Jon Pertwee

7 Peter Davison

8 William Hartnell

9 Patrick Troughton

10 John Hurt

11 Paul McGann

12 Sylvester McCoy

13 Colin Baker

David Tennant and Matt Smith both had the same number of first place rankings, but more people placed Tennant in the 2nd to 4th positons than Smith. Interstingly they both scored the same number of voters plcing them in the bottom 4 positons. Only Patrick Troughton and Sylvester McCoy not being ranked as anybody's favourite Doctor, but both had some voters rating them as their 2nd Favourite.

All in all, I believe it shows that Doctor Who appeals to a broad range of Australians, with so many different opinions on what (or who) makes a good Doctor.

Thank you to all who voted and stay tuned for our Series 8 Favourite episodes, actors/ actresses, writers, etc poll COMING SOON!

Detailed report from the poll is included below, including the formula used to calculate placings:

With the conclusion of Series 8 of Doctor, it's time for the 3rd Annual ABC Whovians Awards!

The Awards consist of 8 questions asking you to rank the stories/writers/directors, etc of the series from best to worst. To enter, click on the link below:

http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/CV38XLK

Voting will be open until the end of the month, with the results being announced on December 1.

 Happy voting!

Frank Cottrell Boyce gives Doctor Who the fairytale treatment with his first script for the series.

I wasn’t sure what to think when sitting down to watch In the Forest of the Night. The premise was intriguing, and judging from the next time trailer at the end of Flatline, it had a distinct fairytale vibe. However, as I watched, I couldn’t help being very strongly reminded of Kill the Moon – so much so that at times I forgot what episode I was watching. To be reminded vividly of another episode is rarely a good thing, but if said episode is Kill the Moon, then it most certainly is not.

In the Forest of the Night sees Clara and Danny and their class of students from Coal Hill School awaken from an overnight stay London’s National Museum to find that the whole planet has been covered by trees. Along with the Doctor, they will have to find the cause of the rapid expanse of vegetation while keeping the students under control.

One of the reasons I say that this episode reminded me of Kill the Moon was because it all felt extremely inconsequential. The protagonists show up, investigate what’s happening, something happens, and everyone goes home. The presence of the Doctor changes absolutely nothing. There are no stakes, and no consequences – a fact further reinforced by the extremely convenient disappearance of all the trees at the end. It’s the ‘new moon/egg’ all over again, a deus ex machina ending that only exists because the whole planet can’t be covered in trees for the rest of Doctor Who’s history. I think that it would have been better for the story as a whole if it had been set on some other planet that humans had colonised. That way, the trees could remain at the end, and no one would really care. But that didn’t happen, and as a result, I would say that In the Forest of the Night is simply too ambitious for its own good. Its very nature means that it can’t have any lasting consequences – something that the Doctor points out (in a way) at the end. Humanity will forget the trees, if only because narrative convenience demands it. The damage caused by the trees will be repaired, footage recorded of the event will be inexplicably ignored, and we’ll never hear about it again. That’s why I don’t particularly like large scale invasions on modern day Earth – they can only really have consequences that affect the main cast directly, but never the planet as a whole.

But the large scale impact of the trees (or rather, lack of) isn’t the only problem I have with them. Their mere presence raises a lot of questions that I’m sure weren’t intended. For instance, if the trees exist to protect the planet from a solar discharge of some sort (it’s not a solar flare, despite what the planet says), then why didn’t they do this exact same thing in the late 30th century, in which solar events were so fierce that humanity had to completely abandon Earth for thousands of years, leading to episodes like The Beast Below and The Ark In Space? I know that continuity and Doctor Who don’t go well together at all, but some narrative consistency, especially on this scale, would be really nice. Also, as an aside, it seems a bit stupid that after burning down the trees fails, governments resort to using chemicals to kill them. Why not get a good old fashioned axe or chainsaw and chop them down manually? Of course, there’s no guarantee that this would work either, but I think it strange that no one seemingly thought of this.

Unfortunately, the problems I have with In the Forest of the Night don’t end there – there are three specific scenes that were more irrelevant than most of the episode, scenes that didn’t impact on the story or plot at all. The first of these is the wolf and tiger attacks, which were obviously added purely for an ‘action scene’ and a shot for the next time trailer at the end of Flatline. Also, shining a light in a tiger’s eyes is not going to make it go away – and you definitely don’t do so from a couple of metres away. Secondly, the broadcast plea from the children not to hurt the trees just felt out of place, and I’ve no idea how it remained in the final version of the script, seeing as it was completely forgotten about the moment it was over. Not that it mattered anyway, since no major organisation is going to heed the words of a child asking them nicely not to hurt the trees. At best, they’d think it’s a ploy by some more extreme environmentalist groups to guilt trip them into making a decision. And finally, the appearance of the main girl’s sister at the end was Maid Marion from Robot of Sherwood all over again – completely unneeded and honestly, quite baffling. Why did we need her at the end; just to have a happy ending?

But while the central focus and other aspects of the episode fall flat, the characters shine. For the first time in a while, the child actors are actually pretty good – something that came as a huge relief, since they are, in many ways, the driving force of the episode. Their interactions with Peter Capaldi’s Doctor are fabulous, and are probably the most entertaining part of the episode. That being said though, I do wish that the children’s reaction to the TARDIS had been a bit more exciting. A soft ‘wow’ of amazement would have been much better than the apathetic shrugging of shoulders that we got.

The relationship between Clara and Danny was slightly improved this episode as well, though that probably has something to do with the fact that Clara wasn’t lying every two seconds. I particularly like how much travelling with the Doctor has affected Clara – she continually focuses on the bigger picture, at the cost of ignoring the smaller, arguably more important things. Danny is a counter to this, and the dynamic really worked, especially towards the end when he expresses no desire to travel with the Doctor, saying that he appreciates things on Earth just fine. It’s not something that Doctor Who has really explicitly explored before, so I’m glad it got mentioned, even if only for a minute.

In conclusion, In the Forest of the Night is, much like Kill the Moon, a disappointment, squandering basically everything it has going for it. There’s not much to enjoy here at all, with all but the characters and their interactions falling flat.

4.5/10

Writer Jamie Mathieson explores the 2D and 3D worlds in his second Doctor Who script.

After the success of last week’s Mummy on the Orient Express, the fact that its writer would be penning Flatline was very welcome news. Could Mathieson replicate the success of his first episode? Yes, he definitely did. Flatline is simply superb, and ties for best episode of the series so far.

Flatline has Clara investigating monsters from another dimension that are terrorising Bristol, all while the Doctor is confined to the TARDIS after the monsters leech its dimensional energy, trapping him inside. Will Clara be able to save the world all by herself?

Original ideas on Doctor Who are somewhat of a rare occurrence these days – no surprise considering it’s been around for almost 51 years. But every now and then, an episode like Flatline comes along, and has a truly original premise; in this instance, monsters from a plane of existence with only 2 spacial dimensions attacking ours of 3. It’s an intriguing concept, and is pulled off very well here, with the ‘Boneless’, as the Doctor christens them, being extremely effective villains. Like the Mummy from last week’s episode, the Boneless actually do things and pose a real threat to the cast, instead of being shunted to one side in favour of something else, or forgotten about altogether. Their ‘gimmick’ also works well as a horror device – seeing people sucked into the walls and floor, then having their body parts displayed for all to see is a quite disturbing prospect. But another great thing about the Boneless is how they’re shown to adapt their attacks as the episode progresses, from simply being able to convert from 3D to 2D, then from 2D to 3D, and finally warping the two dimensional plane entirely until it resembles and functions like the 3D one.

But as great as the monsters were, they weren’t the only thing in the episode. Flatline was Clara’s time to shine as she filled the role of the Doctor while he was busy playing hermit crabs with the significantly diminished TARDIS. What’s interesting is that throughout the episode she seemed to be going through a checklist of things the Doctor would do. Recruit a companion, lead a large group of people away from a threat, promise to save everyone’s lives and invariably fail to do that. But the crux of this is towards the end, when the TARDIS needs powering up. Clara initially asks what the Doctor would do in this situation, but immediately corrects herself and asks what she would do instead. Exactly why she would seemingly reject the Doctor’s line of thought in preference for her own (in this instance, at least) is a bit unclear, but I think that perhaps she’s telling herself that she can solve problems independently, without any help from the Time Lord. Of course, it could also be simply because the Doctor wasn’t in a position to give advice at that time. But whatever the reason, I’m just glad that we could see Clara making these sorts of decisions by herself. And the actual resolution she came up with was, much like most of the episode, rather clever and imaginative, and one I definitely didn’t see coming. So well done Clara.

However, Clara didn’t manage to impress me 100%, and that’s due to her phone call with Danny Pink. I’ve been going on about how much I dislike Clara’s treatment of Danny thus far, so I’ll simply say that in this case, she probably should have ignored Danny’s call and set her phone to say that she was busy. After all, if she did it when Danny rung a second time, why couldn’t she have done it earlier and not have to lie to him again? Speaking of lying, the revelation that she deceived the Doctor at the end of Mummy on the Orient Express came as no surprise. I saw that coming as soon as it aired, but I’m glad it was resolved quickly, without dragging on for too long.

Another small problem with the episode is that the defeat of the Boneless feels rather rushed, and is completely unexplained. The sonic screwdriver once again comes to the rescue and makes the TARDIS do...what, exactly? The Doctor says that he’s sending the Boneless back to their own 2D world, but how he does that, and whether there’s anything stopping them from attacking humans again, we never find out. It would have been nice if we got some explicit confirmation as to what happened, and all it required was a few lines of dialogue. Get rid of the rather silly wannabe 11th Doctor speech that 12 gives before defeating the Boneless, and use the ~30 seconds of screentime to do some explaining.

But other than that, the episode's essentially perfect. Peter Capaldi is brilliant as usual, even with his limited screentime. His interactions with Clara without, especially the parts where he's communicating with her through the tiny TARDIS doors are one of the highlights of the episode, and part of me wishes that we could have seen more of him handing large objects to Clara through the small TARDIS when it's in her handbag. The supporting cast is great too, with Rigsy (Joivan Wade) being a stand out. I also liked how the unlikeable supervisor survived; it was a great way of subverting audience expectations as to who makes it out of an episode alive.

Overall, Flatilne is an excellent episode. With very well realised monsters, some great Clara moments, funny TARDIS moments and a solid supporting cast, a few minor niggles can’t stop it from being tied for the best episode of the Series so far.

9/10

The Doctor finally responds to the phone call he received at the end of The Big Bang.

New writers are always hard to judge on Doctor Who, as it’s hard to guess in advance as to whether you’ll find the episode enjoyable or not. So, was Jamie Mathieson’s first ever Doctor Who episode a success? It most certainly was! In fact, he’s written the best episode of the series so far.

Mummy on the Orient Express has the Doctor and Clara taking a ‘last hurrah’ trip on an interplanetary version of the famed Orient Express. Intending for the journey to be nice and relaxing, they soon find themselves solving the mystery of the Foretold, an apparition that kills its victims exactly 66 seconds after they see it.

I’m just going to say it right now, but the Mummy is the best monster we’ve had in ages. Incredibly effective, it actually comes across as very menacing, helped in no small part by the fact that it actually does something throughout the episode. The mystery about its identity and how it worked was also very well realised, and the overall result was an extremely engaging monster of the week. The ’66 seconds to live’ gimmick was a nice touch as well, but I did get annoyed at the onscreen timer counting down to zero. I understand what the production team was trying to do, but it wasn’t necessary at all, especially considering that the chief engineer, Perkins (Frank Skinner), was counting down out loud anyway. The onscreen clock could have been dropped, and the episode wouldn’t have been any worse for it.

That, however, is one of only a few minor gripes I have with the episode, the other being the fact that the unseen ‘villain’ of the episode, Gus, was left frustratingly unresolved. Who was he? Why did he want to use the Mummy’s technology? How many similar space trains had he used to examine the Mummy? How did he contact the Doctor? What happened to him? Alas, we are never told.

Apart from that, however, Mummy on the Orient Express shines in all other respects, with particular note to the Doctor/Clara interactions. While initially fearful that the events of Kill the Moon had been swept aside with no real consequence, I was glad to see that the Doctor’s actions still had repercussion, albeit not in the way I had expected. While I think the episode could have worked just as well had Clara been absent, having her there did allow the chance for the episode to explore the Doctor’s workings – particularly the fact of how he lies to people to gain their trust. The scene at the end where the Doctor explains his reasoning to Clara was also good, and finally cleared up some of the moral ambiguity surrounding Peter Capaldi’s 12th Doctor. It’s certainly reassuring to know that he does have his hearts in the right place, even if his actions don’t appear to demonstrate this. After all, it’s what’s on the inside that counts.

But while the audience gained a much clearer appreciation of the 12’s conscience, the same cannot be said for Clara. As I said in my review of The Caretaker, Clara’s treatment of Danny has been nothing short of terrible, and it doesn’t get better here either. At the very end of the episode, she announces that Danny is suddenly alright with her travelling with the Doctor – however, it’s extremely obvious that she’s lying. Hopefully this will get addressed in future episodes, but for now I can do nothing but denounce her behaviour. Continue travelling with the Doctor, fine, but at least tell Danny about it first. He deserves to know, not to be shunted aside and left in the dark once again. Going behind his back shows that Clara has a complete lack of respect and willingness to trust the person she’s in a relationship with. Rather alarmingly, this is getting close to the Rose Tyler/Mickey Smith dynamic, something we do not need a repeat of.

Mummy on the Orient Express also had a fairly large amount of supporting characters, and unusually, all serve a purpose in the episode. Yes, two get killed off, but Masie is vital to the resolution and Perkins helps drive the plot forward. All four characters are surprisingly complex given their relatively brief screen time, with the Captain having a traumatic past, the Professor hinting at a lifelong obsession with the Foretold, Masie resenting her grandmother, and Perkins having begun his own investigation into the Foretold. It seems as though they’re all ripped straight out of an Agatha Christie novel – no surprise considering the title. It’s obvious that the episode draws inspiration from the crime novels.

All in all, Mummy on the Orient Express is a fantastic episode. With only two minor nitpicks, it has a great monster, great characters and some interesting interactions between the Doctor and Clara. Definitely the best episode of the series.

9/10

Peter Harness sends the Doctor and Clara to the moon in the near future for his first Doctor Who debut.

The BBC’s hype machine plays a pivotal role in the marketing of Doctor Who. Generally, they get the exposure and excitement levels just right, but this time, I think they over did it. The episode was really sold as a full on horror story and one of the darkest adventures ever, and it didn’t help that various advance reviews were consistently rating the episode very high indeed. And the hype worked – I was fully expecting something similar to Silence in the Library, except with spiders. What transpired was something...odd, to say the least.

Kill the Moon has the Doctor, Clara and her student, Courtney, visit the Moon in 2049, just as a group of astronauts are planning to blow it up. But as they uncover the mystery behind the Moon’s mysterious gain in weight, another problem presents itself. Can they sacrifice one innocent creature to save the entire human race?

Much like Hide last year, Kill the Moon completely changed focus about halfway into its runtime, and much like Hide, it's detrimental to the episode as a whole. One moment we’re cowering in fear from the spider-bacteria, the next we’re wrapping our heads around the fact that the Moon’s an egg. If Harness had just kept to one of the two main ideas here, then the episode would most certainly have been better off. And to be honest, I wish he’d stuck with the spiders. Baser-under-siege stories are admittedly a cliché of sorts for Doctor Who, particularly in the Classic Series, but there’s no reason why a new writer couldn’t put a new spin on the genre. The makings for a fantastic horror story are all there – deserted base, disposable crew, scary monster, but they all ultimately go nowhere. The deserted base is just...there, the crew are killed off for essentially no reason, and the monsters completely disappear once the story has no need of them. Seriously, there are a few shots of them swarming towards the base, and then they disappear, never to be heard from again, not even during the 45 minutes Clara, Courtney and the astronaut girl have to wait before the bombs explode. It’s very bizarre, and it also means that I have to add another dud monster to my list.

In additional to structural errors, though, the episode also fails quite significantly on the scientific front. Granted, this is a science-fiction show where the main character is a 2000 year old face changing alien who travel in time, but that shouldn’t stop writers from complying with relatively simple laws of science. As it happens, the biggest scientific problem in this episode actually undermines it completely. Eggs don’t gain mass (they lose it to the organism inside), so tides on earth would not have been changed at all until the Moon Egg hatched. Thus, the entire point of the astronauts’ mission is rendered completely moot, and so is all the gloom and doom about Earth. Shoddy science is something that is usually tolerated in Doctor Who, and for good reason, but when an episode’s entire premise is based around it, that’s when it becomes unacceptable.

But even if the major scientific error is ignored, the episode still amounts to virtually nothing. A large part of the Kill the Moon revolves around exactly that: whether or not they should kill the Moon. Should they risk humanity dying or allow a giant space dragon to fly free. It’s a nice conflict, and there’s no easy answer to the dilemma, or at least it appears that way. In the end, it turns out all the difficult questions were pointless, because the creature lays another Moon almost immediately after it hatches. While this is ludicrous by itself, it has the added effect of removing any consequences the episode might have had for Planet Earth. It’s a contrivance and a cop out and ultimately exposes the big problem I have with the idea of the Moon being an egg: it’s too ambitious. I know what writer Peter Harness was trying to do, but his idea’s on too big a scale. No matter what option the characters go with – be it blowing up the Moon or letting it hatch, the end result would be one massive continuity error. As Clara pointed out, there is most certainly a Moon after 2049, and this is precisely why a literal new Moon had to be created at the end. This begs the question as to why the episode had to be about Earth’s Moon; the concept of a Moon being an egg would have worked fine literally anywhere else. Make it a Moon of Mars, or Jupiter, Venus, some other planet. Anywhere would have been a much better alternative.

But for all the criticising I’ve done, there is one somewhat redeeming feature – the argument between the Doctor and Clara. After several years of the Doctor rarely ever getting called out on his actions, it was very nice to see Clara totally flip out at him. And she’s perfectly justified to do so; after all, he did just abandon her and two others before returning at literally the last second. She could have died, and it would have been his fault. But for all its brilliance, I don’t think it’s enough to completely save the episode. While it definitely shows that there are some consequences (though how long they last is another question), I think people are going to remember the confrontation very vividly and rate the episode high as a result. This might be the reason for the incredibly positive advance reviews. A similar thing happened with The Almost People in 2011 – only the final two minutes or so were remembered, and the episode was acclaimed as a result. As it stands though, the Clara/Doctor face off was a minute or so of brilliance, but it was too little too late.

In conclusion, Kill the Moon is the weakest episode of Series 8 so far. Overhyped, with structural and scientific issues abound, it somehow manages to effectively render itself pointless. Coupled with forgettable characters (I can’t even remember the main astronaut’s name) and pointless monsters, the episode is nothing but a disappointment.

5/10

Doctor Who veteran Gareth Roberts returns to write for the new Doctor.

When it comes to episodes penned by Gareth Robots, I can never predict my reaction. Some, like have been genuinely great, others good, and the rest mediocre. So how did I find his latest episode? Rather unfortunately, it was very lacklustre.

The Caretaker sees the Doctor ‘infiltrate’ Coal Hill School to trap and destroy the Skovox Blitzer, an alien death machine that will kill all of humanity if left unchecked. But complications arise when he meets Clara’s boyfriend, the ex-soldier Danny Pink. How will the Doctor react, and will he be able to stop the Skovox Blitzer in time?

With a character introduced to the programme as the new love interest for Clara, it was inevitable that he and the Doctor eventually meet. This time, however, we already had a hint as to what the Doctor’s reaction would be. The boyfriend’s a soldier, and well, the Doctor isn’t particularly fond of soldiers. As such, I was expecting a somewhat antagonistic first meeting as the two sized each other up, followed by a series of verbal spars as they both trying and keep Clara’s attention – sort of like the Doctor’s and Robin Hood’s relationship in Robot of Sherwood. What we got, though, was much worse.

Right from the get go, the Doctor is rude to Danny, although at this stage, he doesn’t know anything about him at all apart from the fact that he teaches maths and was a soldier. Just this tiny amount of information alone gets on the Doctor’s nerves, as he somehow can’t comprehend the fact that a former soldier would teach anything other than Physical Education. (Fun fact, the Doctor’s good friend Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart actually taught mathematics after retiring from UNIT). He then resorts to calling Danny ‘PE’ for the rest of the episode. There’s no way to skirt around this: it’s bullying. By refusing to acknowledge what Danny actually teaches, the Doctor is continually putting him down, making him seem like a lesser human. Not to mention the references to Danny’s former career would no doubt have an enormous affect on the latter’s mental state. We’ve already seen that he suffers from PTSD to some extent; the Doctor’s actions would not help one bit.

The worst thing about the whole ordeal is that there’s no character justification for what the Doctor’s doing. Yes, he’s never been fond of soldiers, but that hasn’t stopped him from becoming good friends with some in the past. The aforementioned Brigadier, Captain Yates, Sergeant Benton, Ross from the 2008 Sontaran episodes, his ‘daughter’ Jenny, Martha Jones...all were soldiers, and the Doctor got on fabulously with them. So why then does he have a massive problem with Danny? It can’t be because he’s Clara’s boyfriend, at least, not at first. Remember, the Doctor’s vitriol starts before he learns of their relationship. Thus, the only explanation is narrative convenience. The plot needed the Doctor to behave appalling to Danny for no reason, and he does. It’s a real shame, because this one fact severely detracted from the rest of the episode.

That’s not to say the whole Danny/Doctor aspect is entirely bad. On the contrary, it actually lends itself very well to a couple of character interactions, particularly when Danny sneaks on board the TARDIS. There’s a poignant moment when Danny begins mocking the Doctor by pretending to be a soldier obeying orders before he quietly points out to Clara that the Doctor’s reaction to his mocking behaviour is what the Time Lord is really like. A similar moment happens towards the end, when Danny asks Clara to let him know if she’s ever pushed too far. It’s evident that he really cares for Clara, and that his experiences with the Doctor have made him worry about her safety even more. And who can blame him? It’s not like the Doctor gave a great first impression

To be honest, I thought Danny was the best of all three main characters this episode, as Clara’s behaviour was also deplorable in places too. Danny’s right to ask if she thinks he’s stupid, because sometimes I honestly think she does. Danny sees an alien disappear in the Time Vortex and she STILL tries to pass it off as something more unbelievable than what he just saw? Sounds like you think he’s stupid to me.

Aside from those few issues though, the rest of the episode was pretty solid. It was nice to see a return to Coal Hill School, last seen briefly in The Day of the Doctor, but last visited by the Doctor in 1988’s Remembrance of the Daleks, but it would have been even better if one of the Doctor’s old companions, Ian Chesterton, could have had a cameo. Hopefully that will happen in the near future. After all, the actor is still alive, and Ian is on the school’s Board of Governors.

Disappointingly, this episode joins the long list of those that feature subpar monsters. It displayed tremendous accuracy during its first ‘establish monster’s ability to kill’ scene, before missing everything of importance later on. The fact that it was touted as one of the ‘greatest killing machines ever created’ got on my nerves though – we’ve heard that before with the Daleks, the Raston Warrior Robot and a dozen other species; it’s getting tiresome. I will admit that it looked great though, and the VFX team should be very proud of their work. The method by which the Doctor initially planned to get rid of it was admittedly rather clever, but unfortunately his second method was a bit confusing, at least initially. It was rather difficult to make out what he was doing – helped in no small part by the iffy sound design which seems to be a major problem this series.

All in all, The Caretaker was a solid episode, let down by a rather serious flaw in characterisation. While it had some good character moments and great production design, the not-so-great aspects of the episode are a bit overwhelming.

6/10

PS: The short scene at the end was a great teaser for the series’ arc. Still got no real idea who or what Missy is!

The Doctor, Clara, a mutant and a cyborg attempt to rob the most secure bank in the galaxy.

It’s interesting to note that in almost 51 years, Doctor Who has never done a heist story – one where the specified goal is to rob a bank. Now, of course, that has all changed with the broadcast of Time Heist, where, in true Doctor Who fashion, the genre is given a neat twist that rounds off a very engaging episode.

Time Heist has the Doctor (Peter Capaldi) and Clara (Jenna Coleman) wake up with their memories wiped in a room with two strangers, Saibra (Pippa Bennett-Warner) and Psi (Jonathan Bailey). All four have to work together to rob the Bank of Karabraxos, all while avoiding the mind-liquefying Teller. Problem is, they don’t know what they’re stealing.

Setting up the episode with that mystery is one of the reasons Time Heist is so engaging. Right from the start, the audience is intrigued: what are they supposed to be stealing, and why? Fortunately, this mystery is maintained throughout the majority of the episode, until finally reaching a resolution in the dying minutes. And for once, the resolution was actually very well thought out. Although it was reasonably simple to deduce that the Doctor was the brains behind the whole scheme, the idea of using time travel to set up the heist was a clever twist. I had personally expected the Doctor to become the Architect and travel back in time to organise the heist after participating it, not doing it all beforehand. It was a welcome subversion of my expectations.

However, if there was one part of the ‘Doctor is the Architect’ reveal that I didn’t like, it was the whole “I hate the Architect” subplot that popped up a couple of times. It just felt tacked on and very underdeveloped – everyone says it, but only when the plot requires them to; the subject is dropped completely when it isn’t needed. As such, when the Doctor uses it to figure out that he’s behind the whole thing, it does feel like a touch too convenient. Also convenient was the fact that the episode’s villain, Ms Delphox (Keeley Hawes) didn’t get the monster of the week, the Teller, to kill the Doctor and Clara when it caught them, and again once they’d been apprehended. Given that there was a scene specifically showing how ruthless Delphox is with regards to illegal activity in the bank, it seems odd that she would even capture the Doctor and Clara, let alone ask a couple of guards to dispose of them.

Speaking of the monster, I’m glad to say that it was one of the highlights of the episode, with a great design and clever gimmick. While not particularly scary, it was very effective in what it set out to do, and I’m very glad that it wasn’t given one scene to show its power before being shunted to the side and forgotten, as has happened quite a few times in the recent series. The fact that it tied in with the episode’s resolution was a bonus too.

Rather frustratingly, there’s nothing much more to say about this episode. It was enjoyable and engaging, with great performances from the cast, and best of all, a good monster. A solid addition to the Doctor Who ranks, if a bit forgettable.

8/10

The Doctor confronts the age-old question: what’s underneath our beds at night? Warning: spoiler-filled review.

 Steven Moffat is well known for adapting childhood fears and using them to create an effective Doctor Who horror story. Moving statues? Cracks in walls? Shadows? He’s done them all. And while it’s true that Moffat used the idea of Something Under The Bed in The Girl in the Fireplace, the trope makes a reappearance eight years later in what is the best episode of the series so far.

Listen has the Doctor (Peter Capaldi) investigate the possibility of a creature so perfect at hiding that we don’t know it exists. Interrupting Clara’s (Jenna Coleman) date with fellow teacher Danny Pink (Samuel Anderson), he enlists her help in proving that there is something under our beds after all.

But is the Doctor right? Is there something hiding only a few centimetres below us every night? It’s an intriguing question, and one assumes that, after 45 minutes, there’ll be an answer. One is rather surprised, then, when, as the credits, roll, the answer is still ambiguous, left for interpretation. It’s a move that has predictably frustrated a significant part of the fandom who like solid facts over guesses and hypotheses, but I personally think it’s a good move – for the episode. While Listen appears to be a horror episode in the vein of 2007’s Blink, it would more aptly be described as a character study. The focus of the episode isn’t the ‘monster’, it’s the interactions between the Doctor and Clara as they seek an answer to the question. It’s this character interaction that is the highlight of the episode, with the Clara/Doctor dynamic taking an interesting turn, particularly towards the end when the Doctor loses his cool and shouts at her. It’s been quite a while since the Doctor raised his voice at a companion, and it was quite a shock seeing it happen again. It will be interesting to see if this sort of behaviour continues in later episodes.

However, this episode isn’t just about them. On their ‘mission’ to find the monster, the Doctor and Clara come across a young Danny Pink (who’s going by his original name of Rupert) and the time traveller Orson Pink. Both characters heavily imply that Clara and Danny have a very strong relationship; indeed, Orson hints at the fact that the two are his ancestors. While there’s no necessity for Rupert and Danny to be who they are, they do provide a running theme throughout the episode, which culminates nicely with the gunless soldier toy. Meeting Rupert also provides some backstory for his characters – we learn why he became a soldier, which will undoubtedly feature heavily later on, especially if he and the Doctor ever meet.

The present-day Danny also features quite heavily, with him and Clara going on the date that they organised at the end of Into the Dalek. Unfortunately, it was disastrous, and is also one of two main problems I have with the episode. While the date scene is suitably cringeworthy, and Coleman and Anderson act their socks off while their characters blurt out the wrong things, it all felt forced – drama for the sake of drama. It wouldn’t have mattered either way if their date had been perfect or not; the Doctor would still have found Clara and asked for her help, and I imagine that all of the non-date scenes would have unfolded exactly as they did in the episode. Why then, did they continually blunder and say stupid things? Yes, it is somewhat realistic, but there’s no narrative purpose or payoff either, as they kiss at the end of the episode anyway, with no hard feelings at all.

The second problem I have is with the climax of the episode, specifically when the TARDIS seemingly lands on Gallifrey, and when Clara hides under the young Doctor’s bed before comforting him and possibly inspiring his later life to some extent. Admittedly, I’m nitpicking here, but it’s worth noting that the boy Clara comforts is not explicitly stated to be the Doctor, and nor is the barn said to be on Gallifrey, though the episode certainly implies both to be the case. But after thinking about it, I’ve come to the conclusion that the episode’s implications are just plain wrong. The boy isn’t the Doctor, and the barn isn’t on Gallifrey. Clara was mistaken.

 Why? Well, there are a couple of reasons. For starters, what we see of the barn in Listen looks nothing like the version in The Day of the Doctor (there’s no upper loft), and the sky outside it is blue, not the burnt orange of Gallifrey’s atmosphere. Granted, Gallifrey has had a blue sky on at least occasion (thanks to an oversight of the production team, or simply because they didn’t have the budget to apply an orange filter to the film), but it seems extremely unlikely that the modern production team would ‘forget’ to make the sky orange, especially considering that the other shots of Gallifrey during The Day of the Doctor all had the familiar orange tint.

So, considering that the barn wasn’t on Gallifrey, then it’s reasonable to assume that the boy wasn’t the Doctor. Yes, the Doctor did go through a troubled childhood, but it’s been stated that he grew up on Gallifrey, not another planet/moon, and it’s also known that he had a family. While it’s possible that his family may have died when he was very young and was sent to a children’s home...not buying it. If he had a family, surely he would have lived with other relatives had they died? Another reason that the boy can’t be the Doctor, however, is because the male Gallifreyan in the scene mentions an ‘army’. As far as I’m aware, Gallifrey only had an army long before the Doctor was born, and during the Time War. They never had need of one in between. This would imply that the scene is set during the Time War, or in Gallifrey’s distant past when the Time Lord’s policy of non-interference hadn’t been enforced. So despite the episode’s efforts to convince you that Clara is once again a central figure in the Doctor’s life, it’s evident that she simply assumed things based on the little knowledge she had of the Doctor, Gallifrey and the Time Lords.

As unfortunate as it sounds, my issues with that scene do bring the episode down quite a bit. If the boy isn’t the Doctor, then the entire basis for the episode is gone, Clara’s speech about fear is meaningless, and the fact that she’s the ‘monster’ under the bed is rendered moot. So while the episode is certainly good, it falls short of being great mainly because of two rather important nitpicks. Despite this, Listen is still the best episode of the series so far. Its dark and creepy atmosphere is very effective, and has some great character moments.

 8.5/10

The Doctor, Robin Hood and robots in Medieval England. Warning: contains spoilers!

Robin Hood is a British folk hero, famous around the world for his story of triumphing against the greedy Sheriff of Nottingham. The tale has been adapted hundreds of times, for radio, television and cinema. It seems odd then, that it has taken Doctor Who almost 51 years to finally add its own adaption to the long list. But is Robot of Sherwood a worthy addition? Not really, no. In fact, it's rather average.

Robot of Sherwood sees the Doctor (Peter Capaldi) take Clara (Jenna Coleman) back to the days of the Crusades in an effort to prove that Robin Hood (Tom Riley) never existed. Meanwhile, the Sheriff (Ben Miller) has aspirations of power and is collecting all the gold in the county to fuel his evil plan.

Mark Gatiss has been a fairly average writer for Doctor Who, with only three truly good episodes to his name since 2005, two of which were written last year. Thus, I was expecting something similar to the brilliance of Cold War and The Crimson Horror. Alas, that was not to be the case, and Robot of Sherwood is the first disappointment of the series. That’s not to say it’s bad, but it definitely doesn’t live up to the potential it could have had, and I think the main reason for this is that it felt out of place; too different from the other episodes of the series. Deep Breath and Into the Dalek were both quite dark, brooding episodes with a very serious tone, whereas Robot of Sherwood is essentially the polar opposite – fun, light-hearted, not taking itself seriously at all. The tonal difference is incredibly off putting and detracts quite a bit from the episode. It honestly feels like it was written for Matt Smith’s Doctor more than anything.

Despite this, Capaldi still manages to make the episode his own. If there’s one positive about the lighter tone in Robot of Sherwood, it’s that Capaldi gets the chance to show the audience other aspects of his considerable acting skills, particular his comedic ability. However, despite his mastery of the art, he still can’t hide the fact that the episode just didn’t suit him as much as the previous two, with the spoon fight and interactions with the Merry Men feeling very awkward and contrived.

Contrived sums up several elements of the episode rather well, actually. The Doctor doubts the existence of Robin...why, exactly? Surely someone who has wandered the universe for millennia would quite readily believe that folk heroes like Robin could exist? It just seems that this subplot was added to have some conflict in the episode. And while unnecessary, it’s hard to deny that the tension between the Doctor and Robin is hugely entertaining. The banter between them in the prison is funny, albeit stupid, but Capaldi and Riley play off each other brilliantly. However, them arguing so heatedly does seem to exist just to allow Clara to be taken as their ‘leader’ and face interrogation from the Sheriff, thus driving the plot forward.

The ‘main’ plot would be a more accurate description, though, as the episode also seems to be crammed full of various other plot threads that never really see a conclusion (the Doctor’s determination to prove that Robin is a fake is the only one that does get closure.) For example, we’re introduced to Maid Marian quite early on in the episode, but what does she actually do? She gets captured, sees a prisoner get murdered, talks to the Doctor, then appears behind the TARDIS at the end. She adds nothing to the episode, and her presence seems quite unnecessary. There is a hint of a subplot concerning her and Robin, but it’s never given enough screen time to be fully explored and developed, and I was left quite bewildered at the end. I don’t think the problem could have been solved by extending the running time either; the rest of the episode didn’t have enough material to merit an increase to 60 minutes or a two-parter. It would have been better if she’d been dropped completely.

One aspect that would have benefited from increased screen time, though, was the Sheriff of Nottingham. Nicely underplayed by Ben Miller, he manages to come across as quite menacing despite having a crucial reveal cut from the final episode thanks to some unfortunate political circumstances. Originally, it was going to be revealed that the Sheriff was the titular robot of Sherwood, having being rebuilt after the spaceship landed on him. This is hinted at several times throughout the episode, but thanks to that scene’s cut, the final resolution is left to a confusing, hard-to-hear line during the climax of the fight scene, and the shot of the Sheriff’s hands sticking over the side of the vat. I know it was a last-minute edit, but it still leaves things annoyingly unresolved and very ambiguous. The average viewer would walk away from the episode none-the-wiser about what the Sheriff actually was.

One other thing about the episode that really irked me was the golden arrow. It’s explicitly stated several times throughout the episode that the Sheriff is gathering all the gold in the county and melting it down to power/construct circuitry for the spaceship. If that’s the case, then why would he risk losing the golden arrow, especially when it’s needed for the spaceship to take off later on? It’s yet another forced aspect of the episode that only exists to drive the plot forward – and it happens again when the arrow miraculously allows the ship to reach orbit. Science doesn’t work like that; it’s the equivalent of chucking petrol on a car and expecting it to have a full tank. It’s almost as bad as gamma radiation appearing as lightning and transferring DNA in Evolution of the Daleks...

But despite what I’ve said above, Robot of Sherwood is nonetheless somewhat enjoyable, but is unforunately very average. Contrived, with a tone not consistent with the previous two episodes, it’s very much a disappointment and a missed opportunity. It honestly would have been better as a prequel to The Kings Demons.

6/10